I Read Books: Assassin's Quest
At the end of Royal Assassin Fitz dies, then after sending some time living as a wolf (thanks to his magic of the Wit) comes back to life. Unable or unwilling to come fully back to humanity, Burrich and Chade try to bring him back to himself. Chade is trying to hold the Duchy of Buck together as it is abandoned by King Regal and attacked by Red Ship Raiders.
Fitz spends quite a bit of time failing to come back to himself. His other magic, the Skill, shows him things, battles, his daughter being born, and lets him know that Prince Verity is still alive. He decides to go and kill Regal.
This goes wrong, but Verity uses his Skill to help him escape and also imprints on him the requirement to join him. So he ventures into the mountains. Despite his best efforts to turn them away, and those of Regal to stop him, he’s joined by others in his quest.
Here at the end of the trilogy we finally see something of the remnants of the Elderling kingdom, and visions of the past, find the truth behind the dragons and understand why no one remembers what happened, and see the link between the Skill and the Elderlings and why, despite Verity’s enormous magical power, he’s still at the end of his tether. We even find out a bit about the Fool and where his prophecies come from.
Fitz makes mistakes, though mostly because he’s on his own against Regal’s entire kingdom and his coterie of Skill Wizards, and later because he’s only been partially trained in the Skill making him vulnerable to the Elderling structures. In the end he makes a significant difference, though as ever, it’s from the shadows. He’s doomed to always be the sidekick, the catalyst, rather than the hero. As is only fitting for an assassin.
Read This: For the end of the Farseer Trilogy, where Hobb turns the magic dial swiftly up without ever losing control of the writing
Don’t Read This: If long passages of travel while Fitz ponders not quite enough information, possibly while out of his right mind, sounds terrible.
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